Chelsea Kerr (she/her/hers), LMFT
Whether it’s with yourself, your loved ones, or the world around you, my therapeutic work is inherently about relationships. I am here to support the truth that I know: that all people have the capacity to transform their lives in a radically real way through the health of such relationships. Together, we can find the words to compassionately speak your truth and explore the echoes of this truth within you.
My approach to therapy is one of gentle honesty and humor, collaborating with my clients as the experts of their own lives. It can be summarized in the phrase: “Make the covert overt.” I have a passion for understanding people within their contexts – their identities, their relationships, and their communities – and seek to use this understanding to support my clients in achieving their mental health goals. My clients typically describe me as honest, friendly, humorous, and compassionate.
Education and Professional Experiences
I have been practicing therapy since 2015. I hold a master’s degree in Marriage, Couple, and Family Therapy (with an emphasis in Addiction and Recovery) from Lewis and Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling and graduated in 2016. I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in the state of Washington and have been since 2019.
I am an eclectic in my approach, as this allows greater flexibility in tailoring therapy to those who arrive. I interweave the following therapeutic approaches, depending on your unique needs: Narrative therapy, Emotionally-Focused Therapy, Gottman interventions, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Feminist Theory, Family Systems Theory, and psycho-education / skills work.
In the therapy room, my style one of gentle honesty and humor. I value collaborating with my clients as the experts of their own lives. I have a passion for understanding people within their contexts – their identities, their relationships, and their communities – and seek to use this understanding to support my clients in achieving their goals.
Personal Experiences
Aside from education and my expertise from my time as a therapist, I provide a unique perspective to the work that I do by virtue of my own lived experiences.
I have experienced the pain of loving someone in their addiction and the difficulty of growing into a healthier role in these relationships. I have disappointed my friends, family, and partners in the depths of insecure attachment and practice self-compassion toward my inner child.
I’m a member of the LGBTQIA+ community. As such, I’ve faced the fear of coming out (or the decision not to), been misunderstood by those close to me, uplifted by strangers, and come to deeply understand the value of both chosen and biological family. I have grappled with my intersectional identity and the privileges it provides me, while committing to anti-oppression work as it is a lifelong journey in necessary humility and harm reduction.
I’ve avoided and confronted my pain, I’ve sought help to walk through my own darkness, and continue to practice authenticity on a daily basis.
All of this to say: I honor the value and difficulty in my own struggle, and will extend that honoring to you and yours.
Your Experiences
Last – but certainly not least – is the importance of your past experiences (and the wisdom you’ve gained from them) in our therapy process. I view myself as having professional expertise, but it is certainly not the end all be all. You are the expert of your life and the value of your innate knowledge of yourself cannot be overstated. While some of our lived experiences will be similar, the intersections of our identities and reactions to such experiences will differ. Your own reactions – thoughts, emotions, beliefs, ideas, needs, intuitions – are therefore a key component to our therapeutic journey.
If that sounds foreign as a concept, you are not alone. It is not the standard approach to mental health or therapy, and I realize that. You may be thinking “I don’t even know what my ‘innate knowledge’ is! Where do I start?”